Dead Like Me
by Tdfgh1
Summary: Elphaba is killed by Dorothy and goes off to join a group of grim reapers, including her un-dead mother. She gets a day job, spies on her living family and unexpectedly living people and takes souls for a living. Based off the TV show.
1. Chapter 1

Her eyes were closed, everything was black and static, and she longed for air but couldn't think to breathe. It was funny - wasn't she dead? Or perhaps she was dying…

Then suddenly, the engines and drives that kept her system going had jump started, her lungs kicking in her chest as she breathed a mouthful of cold, dusty air, her eyes snapping wide open at the shock of the feeling, the world around her, a mass of sickly, glowing greens and purples before fading into proper image.

She breathed again, easier and looked around.

She laying on the ground, staring up at the girl, at Dorothy who in return stared down in disgust and fear, the eyes wide, whimpering, hands wringing themselves is distress.

"I didn't mean to." whispered Dorothy. "I didn't mean to…"

Oh not this again, not now.

She pulled herself to a seated position, leaning back heavily on her arms.

She tested her voice. "Dorothy, we've been over this." She sounded gritty like she just got up from bed. "I….I don't care that you didn't mean to…..."

"Oh Lord, do forgive me."

"Cut that out I say!"

The Witch hauled herself to her feet, her stance unbalanced like a toddler even as she loomed over her child enemy, glaring. Dorothy was still staring downward at the Witch's feet, horrified at the sight. The Witch stopped for a moment, her head cocked quizzically to the side as she studied the child's face. It was as if the Witch's shoes had suddenly sprouted teeth or something.

"Dorothy what – Oh my god!" she screamed and nearly fell over at the sight of her dead body. She stood, wide eyed as Dorothy at the grisly murder scene, green skin peeling away from the face and neck, bloody muscle tissue falling away in chunks, still sizzling with corrosion, the eyes – _her_ eyes, wide open in panic as if she had struggled to survive, the mouth open in a silent scream. But it didn't feel like her, she held no attachments.

It was like a fucked up version of staring into a mirror, a reflection of sorts.

The Witch wanted to look away, wanted to run away but instead stood, transfixed as the sight was too horrible to ignore.

But then she followed Dorothy; the two of them staggering out the door, numb. She was a suddenly a bystander, a passive audience to a future she wasn't meant to see, that she was no longer part of. They made their way down the winding stone steps - the same steps the Witch had dragged Dorothy up just moments ago. A different life.

Liir, having somehow escaped the kitchen came bounding around the corner, his face anxious.

"Dorothy what happened?" he exclaimed.

"I'm fucking dead that's what happened!" I'm dead. What a ridiculous thing to say. "Your precious Dorothy murdered me!"

"I didn't mean to!" cried Dorothy and for a moment, the Witch wasn't sure who she was replying to.

Liir pulled Dorothy to down to sit with him the steps. The Witch sat next to them, knees folded against her chest, watching in distaste as the boy snaked his arm around Dorothy's shaking shoulders, peering down at her in concern and naive adoration. Under any other circumstance, the Witch would have found the scene endearing; the awkward teen and his awkward first attraction, a classic.

She sighed, looking away at the ghosts of Fiyero and herself, huddled together at the entrance to the corn exchange, on those cheap wooden steps, warm despite the impending cold.

This was just sad. All her memories were now spoiled by their outcomes; her time at Shiz with dead Nessarose, the Traitors, Glinda Boq, Milla, even Avaric. There was Fiyero, grinning as she made some moody, snide remark, unaware of his fate, her time at Kiamo Ko, another tragedy and now Liir. The boy had gone from her side just like everything else…including herself.

"Wait – what do you mean _gone?"_ said Liir, his eyes wide with fear.

He was afraid for her, how nice…actually it kind of was.

"She's gone!" wailed Dorothy. "She caught on fire and there was water – but I didn't know! I tried to save her….."

"…..After you came here to kill me…" the Witch added.

"Dorothy, what are you saying?" said Liir.

"You know exactly what she's saying." replied the Witch, not sure why she was still talking to them. She was probably in denial, clinging to the aspects of being alive. But how can one deny being _dead?_

The day went on without incident as everyone was too shocked to act out, the murder still fresh in their minds. Dorothy and the Lion fretted about in agitation, perhaps dreading the complications her death will cause – the Lion did at least. Liir wanted to see the body, pestering Nanny for the key to the tower but what good will that do? She was dead and that was the end of it.

"I don't want him to see it." said the Witch, facing Nanny.

"C'mon, let me up!" exclaimed Liir. "I want to see it."

"The sight would turn the holy blind." said Nanny. "So it's a good thing I'm an old sinner but you – you're just a young fool. Forget it Liir." She pocketed the key.

The Witch stood there for a moment, quizzically.


	2. Chapter 2

The crew lingered around the castle for a while, shuffling around listlessly, gathering provisions here and there, and speaking to each other only out of practicality like 'pass the cape Liir' or 'has anyone seen Toto?' and such. So this was her funeral.

The Witch planted herself on a couch for the better part of the afternoon, trying her hand at laziness for the first time in her life. No wait - not in _life_ In…..in death? For the first time in _death. _Did that sound right? No of course it wasn't right, no one refers to themselves once they're dead. So it was perfect for her.

Liir wandered into the room looking paler than ever, his hands in his pockets and his face, now sharpening with age, blank. The Witch watched him curiously, waiting for him to move, to do something, to say something. But the boy simply stood there like a robot gone out of order.

Useless – no! No she couldn't think that, not today.

"Liir!" called Dorothy from around the hall.

"I'll take the broom." said Liir at last as Dorothy came sauntering up to him like a bright, wide eyed puppy. The Witch grimaced at the sight. "She can be buried with it." He continued.

"But I need it to prove she's dead." Dorothy replied. "What else would do?"

"How about a photo of my screaming, rotten face?" shouted the Witch. "How about that, _my little fucking pretty?" _It wasn't like anyone could hear her.

"I'll carry it for you." said Liir.

"You're coming with me?"

"I…" He paused. "I'm coming with you. Yes. And I'll carry the broom."

No one bothered to say goodbye to Nanny although the Witch supposed it didn't matter as she'd forget this ever happened in a week, yelling for Fabala to come down from her room and socialize with the monkeys or some nonsense like that. The Witch decided to follow the crew. And when they disband she'll….well what could she do?

She'll figure it out later. There was no hurry, not anymore.

It was Liir who was leading the group. Liir of all people! He led everyone out the front, across the molding drawbridge that creaked every time the Lion, who was the heaviest, made a step. Everyone else hurried ahead, even the Witch. Who knows what would happen if she fell in the moat.

On the road, Brr the grown up Lion cub and the mutt lagged behind with the other two creature-things; the life sized mechanical man and the Scarecrow, both of whom made the Witch's skin crawl. The wind was furious and swept around her skirts like a tornado, as if trying to take her like it took Dr. Dillamond.

"Oh dear, it looks like it might rain." said Dorothy. "You know things look different in the rain, like trying to find your way around at night. What if I don't recognize the way?"

"Then we're screwed." replied Scarecrow and the Lion, Brr stared back at him with a horrified expression. "What? It's simple as that."

It was funny, but the Witch felt no remorse for her death. There was that cliche of unfinished business of course, but that was no longer her problem. All this turmoil and corruption were for the living to deal with, people like Avaric, Glinda, and Cherrystone. And they…well they could all rot in hell!

Although the thought lacked conviction.

At the same time, it was relaxing to no longer have anything to deal with, to drift apart from her responsibilities. Nothing mattered and nothing could affect her – she could dump Dorothy and that mutt off a cliff and come away unscathed or maybe find Morrible's ghost and smack her in her fishy face. Or haunt the Emerald Palace! That would be hysterical! Scaring the crap out of guards in the middle of the night, along with that old geezer of a Wizard.

She grinned at the thought and found herself standing straighter, shoulders relaxed, her hands in pockets. There was nothing to burden her any longer, no reason to beg for forgiveness. Hell, dying had to be the best thing that ever happened to her! She should have done it earlier.

"Was she your mother?" asked Dorothy, drawing the Witch from her thoughts. "I'm terribly sorry to have killed her if she was. I mean, I'm sorry anyway but more so if you're related."

Now there was an example of 'unfinished business'. Who was Liir? This boy that had randomly planted himself in her life? He hardly resembled Fiyero and certainly was nothing like her. He was one her first assignments after she woke up at the Cloister, that much she knew. She had started with him –

"I started out with her." said Liir. "How, as a toddler I came to be among the maunts, I can't say. No one ever told me and the Witch wouldn't talk about it."

Neither did any of the other maunts, as if the boy was the root of some taboo, controversial matter. She tried to ask why they had been placed together, and the maunts avoided her for it. And then she demanded to know why the hell they were all avoiding her for it. She had always asked too many questions, it was what got her into that whole mess to begin with. So began her vow of silence. It was incredibly fitting.

"…and then we joined a party that went through the Kells," continued Liir. "Stopping here and there until we got to Kiamo Ko."

"It's awfully out of the way." replied Dorothy.

"You of all people would know I wanted it out of the way." muttered the Witch, more to herself than anyone who couldn't hear her.

"She wanted it that way. Besides, it's where Fiyero had lived."

"Your father?" asked Dorothy casually. Liir shrugged.

"He meant something to her, the Witch." He pointed out and the Witch flinched internally, surprised. How did he know that? How _could_ he know that? Fucking hell, it must have been Sarima or one of those sisters, gossiping around the halls like school girls while the children lurked around the corner, giggling squeamishly. Who knows what Liir heard? The Witch cringed. This could get awkward.

"But what, I don't know." Said Liir and she breathed a sigh of relief. "I never met him. Can you imagine the Witch pouring her heart out to me?"

"I can't imagine anything about her." replied Dorothy. "Who could?"

And they'd better keep it that way.

The With wondered if perhaps it would be better for her to go her own way instead of following this group of misfits and vagrants. She didn't need to her hear herself gossiped about or what Liir was going to do with himself once he got the Emerald City– hell, he wouldn't survive a month in that type of cooperate – cut throat culture, he was still a boy for Oz sake. And a sensitive boy at that, walking around in her cape like some silly parody of a bat. Who was going to take him seriously? But somehow, she wanted to know what would happen to him – to all of them, Dorothy, Brr, the two Talking Statue things, even the dog. They had had such an effect on her, it was almost a right for her to know what would become of them after they killed her life and then herself.

"Liir, I have no confidence in your sense of direction." said the Tinman politely.

Dorothy looked scandalized at the prospect of being lost. "Nick Chopper!" she scolded. "You're heartless!"

Nick Chopper? _That _Nick Chopper? Oh of all ironies! Once again, the world had found a way to screw her, even after death! But whatever, it didn't matter. She kept the thought spinning around her head like a mantra, a comforting mantra. It didn't matter, it didn't matter, _it didn't fucking matter..._

But then why was she still here?

"Ha bloody ha." replied Tinman – Nick Chopper. "And you're an orphan. I'll rust in this downpour. Does anyone think of that? No."

Well one couldn't really be surprised at what happened with Nick and the enchanted axe. Nessarose had been a hard core Unionist. Did they really expect magick to be a strong suit of hers? They should have just shot the man.

"Don't carp, I don't deal with conflict well." said Brr. "Lets sing a song."

"No!" exclaimed the Witch along with everyone else.

"What'll you do once you find yourself courageous – assuming the Wizard grants your wish?" asked the Talking Scarecrow thing. Mindless fool.

Brr shrugged and rolled his eyes. "Invest in the market?" he replied with an uncharacteristic sarcasm. "Join a troupe of music hall buskers?" The Witch snickered at the image. " How the hell do I know? Strike out on my own anyway and find a better group of associates. More simpatico."

"You?" asked the Scarecrow of Nick.

"What will I do if I find myself with a heart?" he scoffed. "Lose it constantly I imagine."

They continued on for a moment in silence, waiting.

"Well Scarecrow, your turn." said Liir. "What'll you do with your brains?"

"I'm thinking about it." he replied flatly and said nothing further.

The Witch didn't want to think of Fiyero, how he might have turned out if he lived to thirty eight, if the Scarecrow resembled that man at all. She glanced sideways at him as he shuffled along with his hands in his pockets, the brim of his hat over his face as he stared stonily forward. He was taller than her, his torso well built with straw although bits fell out here and there. And he had green eyes. Shiny, real eyes with whites.

It was freaky. Those eyes did not belong on the head of an inanimate object.

She quickly turned away.

"Oh Toto!" said Dorothy suddenly. "Where's Toto?"

"He's wandered off to do his business." said Brr, staring at Dorothy the way Liir stared at Nanny making her own funeral arrangements. "Just between you and me, its about time he learned to be private about it. I know you dote on him but there is a limit."

"_Thank you!" _exclaimed the Witch while everyone else thought it.

"He'll be lost!" cried Dorothy. "He couldn't find his way out of a cracker barrel. He's not very bright you know."

There was a polite pause.

"I _think_ we've all noticed that." said Nick.

"I hate to be obvious." added the Scarecrow. The Witch gulped uneasily, trying not to remember his voice. "But you'd have saved yourself a heap of trouble if you hadn't been too cheap to invest in a leash, Dorothy."

"There he is!" she said and pitched up the slope to a small shrine of Lurine, standing defiantly against the wind and rain that whipped against the statue's face. She stood by and watched as Liir and the crew managed to assemble a tent out of her belongings, spreading her cape over the shrine's roof, using the charred remains of her broom as a pole to hold it all in place. They huddled, squished against one another, squirming for room, shivering.

Were they really planning to wait out the storm like _that_?

The Witch rolled her eyes. This storm was probably going to last for hours, and she knew what that was like. Cramped, damp, dirt and grit clinging everywhere, skin stinging like a sunburn. The best thing to do would be to go to sleep except only time she had managed that was after she got wasted at Avaric's dinner party.

She sat down in the grass and found a part of shrine to lean against, arms crossed, knees drawn up as she looked up at the raining sky with the fascination of seeing something for the first time. An image flashed in her mind then; a fragment her conscience had forgotten to include during her 'life flash back' when she was dying. She saw herself, sitting exactly how she was now against the steel lockers on the first floor of her old high school in Qhyore, grey, rainy daylight filtering through the windows, children (for they really were children), sauntering by while she watched them critically, scowling the best a fourteen year old could.

"Tell me more about her." she heard Dorothy say, sounding like a child, begging to be read a bedtime story.

Liir said nothing and stared ahead, scowling the best a fourteen year old could while leaning against her broom with his knees drawn up and his arms crossed.


	3. Chapter 3

Wasn't there supposed to be a ray of light to beam her up to the afterlife or some bullshit like that? Where was she supposed to go?

"The Witch is dead?" shrieked a voice from inside the shrine tent. Probably a Mouse or something. "It can't be. Wait till Nastoya hears – wait till the Wizard hears!"

Hah she _wanted_ the Wizard to hear, to see him squirm like the helpless old fool he was now that his precious scape goat was gone. The Mouse – no not Mouse, more like a Mole or Grite emerged in her line of sight, his paws at either side of his downcast head. She watched him, curious to see the early effects of her death. The Grite whirled around suddenly at the statue.

"Give us guidance!" he said with the tone of a hopeless, angry beggar. "Speak for once!" The storm thundered nearby. Everybody shuddered while the Witch nearly jumped out of her skin. She wasn't used to be so close. "I mean speak in a language we understand." the Grite clarified and was greeted with nothing. The worst of the storm had past.

The Witch found herself thinking of Frex – no wait why does she call him that? He's your Dad, she thought. Remember that now. But what it must be like to outlive your own children! To have them murdered one after the other. Any parent would be devastated, even Frex. Probably. Of course, her death wasn't going to be as hard on him as it was when Nessa died. It was probably going to be like ...like when someone's dog dies ...which was sort of pathetic.

She saw how he recoiled when she said she was a Witch. What was going to happen when he finds out she was also a terrorist? That she killed Madame Morrible and lived like a mad scientist, cooped up in her tower, dehydrating bat corpses and boiling monkey skeletons all for the sake of some hapless cause? God forbid Chistery ever finds his way to Munchkinland. Her father would have a heart attack, die then find her ghost and give her hell for the rest of eternity.

"Find the Wizard's forces and they will protect you." said the Grite scornfully. "That's my advice to you."

"The Wizard's armies will protect us?" snapped Liiir. "The Wizard of Oz is a menace!"

At least she able to teach the boy that.

"Of course." replied the Grite. "A despot, a suzerain – call it what you will. The boss. And you've abetted him in his campaign to wipe out the western resistance."

'Western Resistance', is that what they were calling it? She scoffed, the old hopelessness creeping back to her. She was a washed out activist turned hermit, living in the home of her dead boyfriend,with ambitions to dig up a teenage girl from prison. What in hell kind of resistance was that? That damn Wizard. It's like he's being sarcastic with me, she thought. Rubbing it in and calling it 'resistance'. Plain mockery – it was making her insane!

It _made_ her insane. When she was alive.

"I' not giving myself up to any corps of the Wizard's army." said Liir in a surprisingly even tone. "If there are forces down the eastern side, we'll keep to our plan to veer west, and take our chances through Kumbricia's pass. It'll be a longer route but a safer one."

"Perhaps we'd better get going." said Dorothy.

"You had better go on." snarled the Grite. "I won't join a posse against you nor will I lie to my friends about what I've learned here today."

And I should be going too, thought the Witch. But where was she supposed to go? Up to the Afterlife? Well she had never believed in that sort of religious nonsense. And anyway, if she did get into the afterlife, Nessarose would probably be there to pester her about it, saying '_I told you so!' _over and over for eternity until it killed her. Again.

"...you won't reach the river valley before dark." continued the Grite. "Take shelter under a black willow; you'll find a stand of them where the track levels out and circles a bit of highland swamp. You'll be safe there."

"Thank you." said Dorothy earnestly. The Witch rolled her eyes. She wanted to strangle that girl.

"Don't be a fool." agreed Liir. "Thank him for what?"

"You." said the Grite to the Brr. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I'd be especially wary if I were you. Animals do not take lightly to traitors. If you were more of a Lion, you'd know that."

"I did nothing!" Brr said, almost whining. "I was locked in the kitchen!"


	4. Chapter 4

Can ghosts sleep?

She was an insomniac when she died and now she wasn't sure whether it was still affecting her or if she was just a ghost being a ghost. Did this mean she had a soul? But then again, folks always said that the body was merely a physical vessel so why was it maintained? She was still green and tall, and possessed all her limbs and fingers. What was the point?

She lay in the grass, a few feet away from the crew, thinking over her predicament.

I am dead, she thought, trying to get her head around it for it still sounded absurd. I'm a grisly mess of charred flesh and half dissolved bones, staining the carpet. Unless Nanny remembers to get rid of the body, maybe hiring one of those bio hazard services or something. But what were the chances of that happening? - the old hag would probably drag the whole rotting mess of dead, water-eaten witch into one of the parlours, put it in a chair and have tea with it.

"Dorothy?" said Liir suddenly. "What...what did it look like?"

"What did what look like?"

"The body."

There was a pause. Then Dorothy replied, "Why do want to know?"

"I dunno, I just do. Nanny wouldn't let me up to see it."

Damn good thing she didn't, thought the Witch. Imagine, Liir's last memory of Auntie Witch; a disintegrating corpse, frozen in mid scream... what was his last memory of her? Being shoved into the kitchen, probably. Or maybe he heard some of what was going on upstairs; Dorothy's feeble pleas and her shouting like a mad woman. Maybe he even heard her dying.

She hoped he didn't.

"You wouldn't want to see it." continued Dorothy. "I mean, it was like I threw acid at her – you must have heard it."

"Not really. Just some shouting is all. Nothing out of the ordinary, really."

Nothing out of the ordinary. Was she really that bad?

"Was she really that bad?" asked Dorothy for her.

"Well she mostly kept to herself." replied Liir. "Actually, I kinda imagined living with her to be like living with a temperamental house pet. Like a pissed off cat or something."

A 'pissed off cat' that kept you alive, thought the Witch. That fed and clothed you and kept you away from the Wizard and for what? She felt rebuffed.

"The Wizard said she was a lunatic." said Dorothy. "That she killed some famous lady at that college, Shiz and she that she was terrorist. Is that true?"

"Maybe she was a terrorist." said Liir nonchalantly. "She had a thing for Animals, that's for sure – you know, she actually got one of the monkeys to talk."

"My god that's crazy!"

"She _was_ crazy."

She tried to be angry at Liir for saying such things. After all she had done for him - she should think of him as ungrateful, as a spoilt child at the very least. But she couldn't. She simply couldn't care, not anymore. And after all, it was true she was beginning to lose it towards the end. She had gone from hospitable, sending her dogs to escort the crew, to homicidal, intending to blind them with bees and crows

Maybe she had been bipolar.


	5. Chapter 5

The Grite kept true to his word and ratted on the crew.

Nearly first thing in the morning, as they were finishing washing up, a horse back scouting party of Scrow appeared at the edge of the willow grove. The Witch stood by nonchalantly, her hands in her pocket as the rest of the crew froze, exchanging wide eyed glances before breaking out to a run. Like a cartoon, she thought. She felt like she should be sitting in a lawn chair with bag of popcorn, watching as the crew scurried about like mice; the Lion squealing like...well like Dorothy, and Dorothy who behaved just as her usual self.

"Liir help!" cried Dorothy and Liir leaped to the rescue...only to trip on his own shoelace and fall flat on his face.

If the Witch were alive, this would have been unbearably pathetic. She would have sighed tiredly and scolded Liir for being such a klutz. But now that she was dead, it was actually kind of funny -

What if she ran into Fiyero's ghost?

She couldn't imagine it, it seemed like such a far off idea, silly. But intellectually, it was possible. But where would he be? Would he have stayed in the City or found his way home to Kiamo Ko? She blanched at the thought. What if, during all that time, he was there, at her side, watching her and his wife and children, day after day? He would have been there when Manek, beastly bastardy Manek was impaled by an icicle, when Liir nearly drowned and when – dear god, he would have watched his family as they were kidnapped, chased around the castle before being caught. Helpless.

He would have gone up to her room in the tower, during those solitary Lurinma's days, as she stewed and sulked over his death, sitting by the foot of her bed as she mourned for him, looking down at her, unable to do a thing.

It was not so much comforting as it was embarrassing.

Liir was hopeless at the Scrow camp. He stuttered and fidgeted like a teen at their first job interview ...

"_D'you have any prior work experience?" asked the Owl._

_Oh yes she had. Lots. About two years of it, she had even earned herself an indoor placement. With heating. Although that was more for her customers than herself, everything was for he customers and so she gave her customers everything._

"_Um...I – yes. Yes I do."_

"_Doing what?" _

_She tried not to pause. "In um...well it was mostly menial work in...entertainment."_

_He knows, he must know. Fucking whore._

She cringed at the memory.

The court of the Scrow didn't keep them waiting for long, although it didn't make much difference to her, not anymore. Attendants fussed about, unrolling bits of green carpet, more mildewy than she remembered. She felt a twinge at remembering. Liir had been about six years old, Elphaba had been thirty and hopeful, still young enough to have a life ahead. She had been standing almost exactly where the Scarecrow was, staring at the floor as the Gilikin mail order bride complained loudly about the roaches in her tent. There was Liir, little Liir in the corner with Killyjoy sprawled out around him, Oatsie, chatting with one of the attendants, that horrible, jolly look on her then youthful face, the dying man, looking all but dead except for the steady rise of his chest.

The Witch stared at the green carpet, pretending she was back at that time, waiting to see Nastoya for the first time, when it wasn't too late.

"Stand until her highness is seated." a young translator had said, his voice heavily accented. Probably an intern. "You can sit after."

She was already standing so she didn't bother to move, staring down at the carpet, the Mail Order Bride adjusting the pins in her hair, grinning at the translator boy, Liir jumping up to attention like a little soldier, startling Killyjoy, Oatsie going to wake the dying man...

Nastoya looked like a balloon that was beginning to lose air, her whole, giant being seeming to sag around the six retainers carrying – containing her. Her skin was grey, her hair greyer and the eyes sunken around their loose sockets, but lined with green and purple markings that followed the disorderly crevices in her face. Oh god, _crevices in her face_.

"Princes Nastoya," continued the heavily accented translator. "May I present Dorothy Gale from...parts unknown and her companions, a Lion -" _A _Lion like a Lion was a thing. "a Scarecrow, a man clad in Tin and the boy about whom you've been told."

What had been told? How much?

He repeated the lines in Scrow. The Mail Order Bride had been beside Elphaba, whispering something, a smirk on her pretty face. Like gossipy, seventeen year old Glinda.

"How do you do?" said Dorothy, curtseying.

"Really, who does that?" muttered the Witch.

"Oh you think that's ridiculous." laughed the Mail Order Bride. "My old hubby made me call him Captain Groovy and salute him every time he walked into the room!"

"Princess Nastoya was born in the time of Ozma the Librarian." stated the translator.

"But I can't blame him to be honest." continued the Bride. "I mean he was like fourteen years old when he bought me."

"Same age as Liir." replied the Witch.

The translator glanced at down at his notes. "At the age of fourteen, the Princess..."

"I remember when I was fourteen." said the dead man at the corner of the room. What was his name again? Something like Pud. "I ran away to the City and started a club at Shiz." he smiled coyly at the Witch, suddenly young again, his hair, black. "you a fan of philosophy?"

"Oh don't be an ass." replied the Bride haughtily as the Witch stared at him uneasily.

"I am sore with disbelief." began Nastoya. "I had only known that the Witch sent out Crows to call for help. Before they could reach me, they were attacked and their flesh had been devoured by a posse of nocturnal rocs."

"How do you know about the Crows?" asked Liir.

"Nocturnal rocs are mute beasts but the attack was witnessed by a Grey Eagle who keeps an eye on a certain district for me. He drove the rocs away from one Crow who managed to pass on the message of the Witch's em battlement before dying."

"Well not really to be honest." piped up the Crow. "I got like three words in before I croaked. Sorry bout that."

"Don't worry about it." replied the Witch, surprisingly offhanded. "It doesn't matter now."

"The Eagle delivered the message to me as I was closing a convocation with some of the southern Arjiki Clans." Nastoya added.

Liir frowned slightly and said, with that annoying adolescent arrogance; "The Witch should have been told about that. She considered herself an honorary Arjiki of sorts."

"Hah! 'Honorary Arjiki my ass!" exclaimed the young dead man. "Aren't you a Munchkin?"

"Well yes," replied the Witch. "Honestly, I don't know where that boy gets his ideas – I was doing genetic research most of the time."

"Oh I'll vouch for that." replied a monkey with failed wings – one of her early attempts wrong, the fibres, twisted and demented, like tumours, hanging off the poor creature's back.

There was an awkward silence.

"I won't be lectured on strategy or protocol." cut in Nastoya.

"And... neither will I." replied the Witch, her voice rising in horror and embarrassment.

"In any case, I did invite her. But I never knew if my invitation got through. I was told that she was distracted with grief over the death of her sister."

"Oh so you were distracted were you?" snapped the failed monkey. "You were doing operations on us and was _distracted?"_

The Witch had no idea what to say. For the first time in years, she stood there stupidly, stuttering like a child with a ball and a broken window.

Liir came to her rescue. "She was..."

"Speak up son." said the dead man patronizingly. "My ears aren't yet what they used to be and I want to hear this!"

"...unsteady. At the end."

The dead man burst out laughing.

"Oh god's sake, shut up!" snapped the Witch pathetically.

Liir continued nonchalantly "I'm not sure how much she could have done for you, or if she would have bothered. In truth she was kind of a hermit. She kept to herself."

"You really did." said the Bride. "It was actually a bit creepy you know."

"You could have at least taken a course before trying to be a surgeon." said the monkey. "I mean look at the shit I'm dealing with! I'm practically a hunch back thanks to you."

"I..." I'm sorry? No, how could she say that? "...I - I don't..."

"It's plenty obvious you don't." the monkey (or was it Monkey?) barred his teeth at her, only to look even more failed than before. She felt herself sink at the sight.

"Now you see, this is the one thing I hate about being dead." said the dead man. "I mean ya get rid of things and then the moment you kick it, they all pounce on you. Would have killed me if I wasn't already dead."

The Crow appeared again at his side. "It's not like you were any better off than before." he pointed out to the monkey. "I saw you, you know. Scrounging about in that barren wasteland – you were going to freeze to death anyway."

"What were you doing with them in the first place?" asked the Bride. "I mean, why the wings?"

This was becoming chaotic, all these figures from her past, popping up, jabbing at her, all while talking over Liir and Nastoya. She was having trouble keeping up, they all seemed so unreal. And who was next? What was she going to do if – god forbid – Madame Morrible walked into the tent, her head split open like a watermelon, just how she left her, blood soaking into her fish shaped dress...

She'd probably faint.

"Um I – I was trying to prove a point. About Animals and animals and...human beings."

The monkey wasn't satisfied. "Well you know what?" he scanned the room at them all. "Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck your bloody point – you murdered us!"

"Is the murderer here among us?" asked Nastoya.

"Yes! Yes she bloody -"

"It was an accident." replied Dorothy and the Witch. "I didn't mean it." It was a useless thing to say. She had never meant for any of it. Never. And look how that turned out.

"_What would you want if the Wizard could give you anything?"_

Forgiveness.


	6. Chapter 6

The frat boy Dead Man was the only one who wasn't repulsed.

"Hah! You know, if the Kumbric Witch had a glandular problem and met an elephant and they - "

The Bride cuffed him upside the head, an expression of tiredness on her face. "Really," she said. "How old were you when you died, twelve?"

He grinned at her. "I'm a child a heart."

But the Witch wasn't paying attention to the antics of those souls. She was utterly transfixed at the predicament of Nastoya; the Half Fucked Elephant-Human Princess Thing.

"You see?" said the Monkey patronizingly. He waddled up to the Witch, tilting side to side to shift the weighty tumours on his back until he was at her feet. "You see?" he said again "Now _that" _he pointed towards Nastoya. "That is exactly how I feel."

"...didn't want it." was all the Witch managed to croak, unable to take her eyes off it.

"Oh come off her for a minute will you?" said the Bride, "She's new."

"Don't ya just love newbies?" the Dead Man then wrapped his cold, waxy arm around her shoulders, smirking as she went stiff like a petrified lizard.

She should have just stayed at Kiamo Ko.

"I am an Elephant." declared Nastoya ridiculously. She was literally an Elephant head on a stick, a puny, human stick. "From the Wizard's pogroms against the Animals, I have been hiding as a human all these long years."

The Witch glanced sideways at Liir, wanting see how he was taking this. He was just standing there, wide eyed, his mouth hanging open like a dope so she was half inclined to march over to him and clamp it shut.

"Your boy looks a little green about the gills." said the Dead Man, his icy breath in her ear.

"What – no, he's not mine." she shook his arm off her shoulders and he feigned a wounded look. He was reminding her of Avaric.

"I'm admired by the Scrow," continued Nastoya. It was even creepier to see her talk. "For my longevity and what passes for my wisdom. In exchange for my protection, a home in the Thousand Year Grasslands, I have performed my duty as a leader. But of late, young boy-thing, I am unable to shuck off my disguise with the ease I once had. Though Elephants pretend to immortality, I believe I am dying. I will die as an Elephant. But I need your help."

"What in hell does she expect Liir to do?" exclaimed the Witch. "He's barely even left the castle grounds." _ Thanks to you_ replied the voice in her head.

"Well we all have our firsts." said the Bride, trying half hardheartedly for reassurance.

The Witch turned to her disbelievingly."When was the first time you had to restore an Elephant head to it's body?"

"Yes well – I actually had an experience sort of like that. Except it was with a cat and it was dead."

"How can I be of service?" cut in Liir.

"I don't know." said Nastoya. "I once told Elphaba Thropp that if she needed help, she was only to send word, and I would put all my resources under her command. I never thought that the reverse would happen. That the time would come for me to apply to her for her knowledge of Animals, her native skill and charms."

The Witch stared at Nastoya, her brow raised. She had no idea her reputation as a witch had expanded like this.

"But I have stared too late, as your companion has murdered my only hope."

"Dorothy was not to know." said Liir darkly.

"And what if she did?" replied the Witch. The Bride turned to her boyish companion.

"You see?" she said to him. "Conspiracy theories."

"Guess kids don't change that much do they?"

"How long have you two been watching me?" asked the Witch. She almost didn't want to know.

"Oh _we_ haven't been watchingyou." replied the Bride cheerfully. "We just got here yesterday actually."

"It's the most I've ever had to commute to work." added the Dead Man.

"What does that -" the Witch was cut short as Nastoya's trunk suddenly shot out of her face and wrapped itself around Liir's head, as if she was about to crack his skull like a nut. "Shit, what did he say?"

"I dunno." replied Dead Man indifferently. "We weren't listening."

"Get interested!" snapped Nastoya. "Get interested or get help. If you're not to be murdered for your crimes against Elphaba – and that might yet happen – get yourself enough knowledge from someone, somewhere, get help. Was there a book? A Grimmerie? Did Elphaba have associates? I don't care how long it takes, but come back to me. I can't die like this, I won't. In the end, all disguises must drop."

The Witch suddenly became aware of herself, in the same dress she died in, complete with a black , pointy hat and boots...

"You can borrow my sweat pants." said the Bride who noticed it too.

"Am I going somewhere?"

"Yes, and you're going to be noticed, walking in dressed like that."

She shrugged. "I'm used to being noticed."

"You confuse me with someone else." said Liir. "Someone with competence. Someone I never met."

"This isn't a request," said Nastoya forcefully. "It's an order. I'm a colleague of Elphaba's." she finally let go of his head and blew her horn in his face, causing him to reel back, cringing as his hairs were pulled out from his scalp. "If you claim to be a relation of the Witch's, you'll figure out what to do. She always could."

"Well not always," said Dorothy, rubbing it in. 'As is woefully apparent at this time."

"You I was actually close to murdering her." added the Witch. ""Really, I was going to kill her with fire."

"Instead, you're going to haunt her forever." replied the Bride.

"Really?"

"No – I mean you _could_ but you shouldn't."

"I will pay you." Nastoya was saying to Liir. "I will keep my ears to the ground for word of your abducted friend – Fiyero's cub Nor. Nor is it? Come back to me with a solution and I will tell you all I've been able to learn in the mean time."

All attention was on Liir who seemed to shrink into himself in return, shoulders hunched, arms pinched close to his sides. Then he shrugged and held his hands out palms up, in a vague, indistinguishable gesture. What was he doing? Was he accepting the task? Denying it? Or maybe he wasn't sure.

"Such terrible timing you have" said the Dead Man to the Witch. "Right from birth to day of your death."

"I know - I should have been killed next month." she said it almost jokingly, surprised that she had any capacity to joke. But it was a nice feeling. Cheery. "I mean I was going to do it anyway, you know."

There was a silence, the Bride and the Dead Man glanced at each other with expressions of shock...and...and pity? No, why would that be?

"What do you mean?" asked the Bride slowly.

"I was going to burn the broom, the shoes, and the book then -"

"You were going to _burn _yourself?"

"Bury. I was going to bury myself."

The Bride just stared at her, wide eyed.

"But hey, then came Dorothy and did the job for me!" she grinned happily for the first time in fifteen years.

No one said a word, and stayed like that for a good while.


	7. Chapter 7

"So where are we off to?" asked the Witch as they headed out.

It was already dark out – almost black, as rural areas were known to be. But the moon was full and gave the earth a thin, cold tinge so that her skin looked more pale than green and her companions became white – literally white like sheets of typing paper. She looked away from them. They looked unnatural, even more dead than before. Like ghosts.

But then again, that's what they were. _Ghosts. _

And so was she.

"We're gonna stay here for the night." said the Dead Man. "Tomorrow, we head for the City."

They walked down the dirt road, passing clusters of round, clumpy tents, filled with equally clumpy people who stopped and stared at the astonishing foreigners, the fidgety Lion, the Tic Tok man, the sullen, green eyed Scarecrow. And then there was Dorothy who walked forward with an aggressive smile sewn into her face, and Liir who lagged behind the group, his hands shoved in his pockets like a caricature of a teenager.

They came a fork in the road, one way leading downtown – or whatever passed as downtown – and the other, to the Emerald City.

"You'll see em again you know." said the Dead Man to the Witch, as he saw her pause.

"You mean in the Afterlife with a bullet in his brain?"

He shrugged. "Meh, I wouldn't know – that's like upper management stuff, but we're headed to the EC -"

"EC?"

"Yeah, Emerald City. It's easier to write, and now we've started saying it. Anyway, we're going there, so there's a good chance you'll meet again, considering how long we'll be staying."

"I don't miss him." replied the Witch unconvincingly. "If that's what you're implying."

"Oh sure you don't."

"I don't. And that is the end of the personal inspection, thank you."

"Hah, we hardly need any inspection considering -"

The Bride stopped him short with a glare, looking like an annoyed older sibling for she was older than him now, in more ways than one it seemed. It was a strange predicament. When they were alive, the Dead – then Dying Man had been in his seventies, whereas the Bride had not been much older than Elphaba herself – maybe about thirty five or so at the time. Now, any trace of the Dead Man's previous old age had gone; his hair was jet black without a hint of grey, his face, sharp and well defined , with bright, dark eyes that were far livelier for someone who was supposed to have been dead of eight years. But the Bride – she hadn't changed a bit and remained just as the Witch remembered her; a version of a lively, high sprung youngling, grown refined. She was older, and it seems she had chosen to remain that way for eternity.

"C'mon." said the Bride gently. "We should go."

They turned to leave, and the Witch followed behind, unexpectedly, shamefully reluctant. She found herself glancing back, at the Oakhair Forest, and the Vinkus that had become her home these past eight years.

And at her boy. At Liir who had stopped for a minute at the edge of the path, a mirror image of herself, looking back where he had come from before turning to her. He was staring into space, at the empty, alternate path where the Witch's ghost stood and stared back at him, his pale, sharpening face and the shining, green eyes of his father.


	8. Chapter 8

"You have a room under Ian Grumman, yes?" said Igo to the ageing Scrow woman at the counter. She moved slowly, tiredly, bending over the records book, squinting furiously at the finely printed names.

"Yeah." she said finally. "One twin room booked for one night?"

"Yep."

She handed him the keys. The Witch peered at her curiously.

"Are you dead too?" she asked. The Bride made a squeaking noise and grabbed her by the shoulder to pull her away. But the Scrow woman made no reaction.

"We're all a little dead here." she replied flatly.

They walked down an unfurnished, industrial looking hall that looked like it belonged in storage facility; grey, concrete floors and walls made of wooden planks, nailed one after another. The room itself was decent enough. There were two medium sized beds lined up along the top left corner of the room in an L shaped formation and a small desk at the other corner with one of those new, box shaped clocks that ran like a slot machine; the numbers sliding up every minute, every hour, so that the time was written. It read 9: 35. And room was heated which was impressive. They had one of those new, grid heaters that blew hot air from pipes that ran underground.

The Bride grimaced. "Ugh, you know disgusting motel beds are? There was an article about it last week -"

"You can sleep on the floor then." said Igo, Ian, whatever his name was.

"Is your name really Ian?" asked the Witch.

"Not really." he said. "We change our names every few decades or so. I've been Ian since last month. Before, it was Igo."

She knew what that was like, to have an assortment of names, each appropriate for it's own purpose. There was Fabala, Fae, Witch, Elphie. And then there was Elphaba.

"How do you like that?" she asked. "Having to switch your name every while."

He shrugged. "It's just a name."

The night was quiet and excruciating. Ian snored away on the floor, sprawled out immodestly, obnoxiously like a wet mop. The Bride didn't seem to be having trouble sleeping either, and lay still on the other bed adjacent to the Witch. So ghosts can sleep.

The Witch wondered if she could take sedatives or something. She wasn't bothered by the dream anymore. That image of the defeated, suicidal Wizard and the mythical ocean; it had all already happened to her so there was point in fearing. So why couldn't she sleep? It was becoming annoying, now that she didn't need to avoid it.

What about sleeping pills? Can ghosts take pills? Or what about vitamins like melatonin?

It didn't help that a slit of moonlight had gotten past a crack in the curtains, projecting a ray of silver across the room, wider and wider until it reached her bed.

And it was only 10:30.

The Witch sighed and got out of bed, feeling tired but not sleepy. She looked around once, not wanting to wake anyone, then stepped quietly across the room, past Ian, who was till snoring like a pig, his arms outstretched and his hands curled up so the Witch felt that he was going to wake up and grab her by the ankles. He didn't budge, thank...thank whoever, thank _nothing_.

The Witch rolled her eyes at herself then grabbed the room key off its hanger and headed out the door.


	9. Chapter 9

She had always enjoyed walking around at night.

The streets would be dark and empty, lit by only a few scattered oil lamps that cast a pretty, orange light which contrasted sharply with the surrounding blackness. It made everything seem almost...almost surreal. As surreal as her green skin, so she was able to contribute towards the picture instead of clashing with it.

But not so much at this moment, for people were still staring at her with that stupid googly look, eyes wide like saucers, mouths open, muttering to one another as if she couldn't notice. She trudged forward, hands in her pockets, hat drawn over her face to hide her cloudy, even more intimidating expression that she had perfected over 38 years. She should have waited a few hours before going out. Or do some ghosts just never sleep? Ian the Bride could so why can't these people?

She saw a small building off the side of the road that resembled a restaurant or a pub with cheap furniture scattered at the front, made with thin, white plastic that showed off the dirt and grime that clung to it. The sight was depressing and the reminded the Witch of her run down youth in the Emerald City or EC as it was now called. She quickly headed inside.

It was a dimly lit little place with rough, wooden floors that looked grey, a couple of metal tables at the back, and a large picture window, sunk into the pale brick work of the left wall. At the right, there was a bar. A bar and shrivelled, brown ghost barman who jumped when she opened the door. He looked at her with a familiar, glazed expression, his mouth twisted into a remnant of a smile.

But she was too happy and too dead to care, to be saddened by his state. She sat on a stool in front of him.

"So how long have you been dead?" she asked.

He laughed, a high pitched, pealing shriek that at would have made her cringe at one point but now made her chuckle in amusement. The Barman poured two glasses of whiskey. His hands were tattooed with dark blue swirls that twisted their way around his fingers like smoke, drifting its way up his hands and arms. He winked as he handed her drink. She could see more markings around the base of his neck and chest, the shapes crunched according to his shrunken stature.

"On the 'ouse." he said, his speech already slurred.

She thanked him and sipped her drink, surprised she had the capacity to do so. Or maybe the whiskey had gone bad in a previous life and was now dead. At least it tasted the same. The barman staggered to the back of the bar to wipe and wash glasses and she watched the markings on his arms contort with his movements, curios.

"What's your name?" she asked.

He stopped what he was doing and turned to peer at her. "Now thas somethin I don't get of'en." he said slowly, as if deciding whether to tell her or not. He went back with his work. "Name's Darrow." he said over his shoulder.

"Darrow." she said, trying it out for herself. "Are you from here?"

"I'm Vinkun originally."

That much was obvious, with his dark skin and tribal markings. She sipped her drink.

"I just got here two days ago." she said. "I keep thinking about all the people I've known and loved and wronged – I'm actually responsible for a few being here. Do you ever find that awkward?"

Darrow paused for a moment. "I was put here by a guy." he said. "I'll forgive him when I see him in hell."

"Well this is close enough isn't it?" replied the Witch jauntily. "Who was he?"

"My brother, Fiyero."

The Witch's eyes went wide and she sputtered in her drink, sending fumes up her nose, causing her to cough. Darrow handed her a napkin.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Your brother - " the Witch coughed again. "you're brother whats his – whats your last name?"

Darrow peered at her, looking like a spindly little insect. "Tiggular." he said slowly.

"My god, I know you people!"

"Yeah most people do." he sounded tired as he said it. "We're Tiggular; The Royal Family of Shit."

"Are you all here?" the Witch glanced at the back door, half excepting for Sarima to come bounding in, all sisters two through six in tow. And Fiyero, with that nonchalant stride of his, his sons; Irji and Mankek beside him.

"They're at South stairs last time I heard." Darrow refilled their glasses.

"I'm sorry for that." said the Witch earnestly. It felt good to be able to finally say it. "And for Fiyero. It wasn't supposed to happen."

"Well we're all a bit sorry."

There was a commotion at the entrance of the bar. The Witch looked up to see the Bride and Ian burst through the doors, stumbling over one another in their hurry. They headed straight for the Witch, their steps heavy and quick.

"Hi there!" said the Bride with artificial brightness. "You having fun here? Well no matter, pay the good man and get going."

"Hello to you too." replied the Witch.

"I didn't know there was a bar." said Ian. "You know, I might sit for a drink -"

"No you're not." snapped the Bride. "We're going."

The Bride slapped a few crumpled bills onto the counter then yanked the Witch off her seat, causing her to stumble backwards, feeling like an underage, college freshman being kicked out of the bar after being shunned by her hyper, pink sparkle of a roommate. She quickly composed herself then downed the rest of her drink just for spite. She set her glass down on the counter just before the Bride suddenly grabbed her by the collar and all but hauled her across the bar and out the door, followed by a snickering Ian and Darrow Tiggular who stared after her curiously.

Once outside, the Witch, who was no longer used to the indignity of being manhandled, whirled around out of the Bride's grip.

"What the hell are you doing?" she said.

The Bride gave her a disbelieving look. "What the hell am _I _ doing?" she replied incredulously. "What the hell are _you_ doing, you could have been caught!"

"What do mean caught? What can we do with each other if we're dead?"

"For God sake, we're the only one's who're dead here! Everyone else is alive!"

The Witch stopped short. "How is that possible? How can they see me – and why didn't you say something about this earlier?"

"We didn't think you'd transition so quickly."

"How do mean 'transition?'"

The Bride sighed, aggravated. "I was never good at explaining this."

"It's like this." said Ian. "You died, that's no problem, and your body will be carted away for the bugs to enjoy. But what about your soul?"

"I have no soul."

"What – how did you know about -"

"Even if you don't have a soul." the Bride cut him off. "Or if it's torn up and hanging by a thread, it still needs to be...well you could say it needs to be dealt with – taken care of."

"And that's where we come in." said Ian.

"So I've been assigned to maintenance?" The Witch didn't know how she felt about that. "Why me?"

"Oh it's nothing personal." said the Bride. "It's like...um – Ian what's that thing that Melena always says? Something about shopping..."

Melena. It was a common enough name. Although the Witch hadn't heard it in thirty years and hearing it again, now of all times left a hollow feeling.

"You don't seem like much of a shopper." Ian said to the Witch. "So maybe you don't know, but sometimes stores give out discounts on certain costumers who present a kind of milestone. Like the lucky hundredth shopper who gets a free shirt or something."

"And if I don't want it?"

Ian shrugged.

"You'll get used to it." said the Bride. "Think of it as a second chance."


	10. Chapter 10

The only other time the Witch remembered travelling by train was at Shiz; the trip from her home Quadling country to Central Oz, then from Shiz to the Emerald City. The familiarity felt strange. Like the memories of a different person, in a different life. Well it _was_ a different life. Yet she still felt a dull twinge at the memory; smoke, clinging to her skin, the hot smell of coal, people lugging parcels and children to and fro the platform and the train itself; still a huge, handsome monstrosity, able of housing an entire community of Quadlings, with steel cogs and wheels tall as her waist, capable of ripping one's leg off and dragging it across Oz.

The Witch remained almost completely silent for the duration of the trip, head turned away towards the window, pretending to watch the scenery as she avoided eye contract with the living who all seemed to be milling about, looking for ways to pass time. Including conversation with strangers.

Ian glanced around with a practised discreetness, before reaching into his coat pocket.

"Something for your nerves?" he said, handing the Witch an orange bottle with clear, gel filled pills. The whole image was suspicious and foreboding. Just how its taught to be, thought the Witch with distaste.

"What are they?" she asked anyway.

"Pills of the future! At least that's what they told me."

The Bride rolled her eyes. "It's a sedative of sorts. Actually we never really bother to find out exactly what these things are, it's just stuff to relax, to energize, and to cheer you up when you've been forty for ten years. I mean it won't kill us."

"One of the perks of being undead." said Ian. "We can pop as many pills as we like, drink enough to kill that Nastoya Elephant thing, fuck as many filthy, road side hookers as we want, then wake up chipper than ever the next morning."

"That's pleasant."

"It is actually, very pleasant. C'mon, have some fun, you could us it."

"What I could use is some peace and quiet."

"Which is exactly what you'll get."

The Witch scowled to no effect for Ian merely grinned back at her, uncaring and excruciatingly lax. When was the last time she felt that carefree? Perhaps for a short time during her late teens, when Nessa and Shell had grown enough to care for themselves to some degree and she was young enough to be a minor with minor concerns and responsibilities. And now she had none. No responsibilities, no life. Oh what the hell, Ian would be bugging her for the rest of the trip anyway if she didn't partake. That alone was almost worth it.

She took the bottle, and poured a smooth, translucent capsule like a fatal poison, snuck into the drink of a high flying politician, only to be drunk by some beautiful, hapless maid, all those years ago. The Witch swallowed it anyway.

About five minutes later, she began to feel it. Her limbs went heavy and her seat became increasingly comfortable despite the stiff, pointless cushioning. All those months of sleeplessness, of stress and fruitless labour seemed to come suddenly crashing down on her like a wave, pinning her down so she couldn't move no matter how she tried to fight. She felt her eyes closing, and the cold window against her head as she passed out.

"That was fast." said Ian.

"So much for undead metabolism." muttered the Bride. Then she said worriedly. "Ian, what are we going to do? What if she finds out?"

"She couldn't tell the living from the dead. Granted it they were Scrow, but still, I wouldn't be worried."

"You heard what she said back there!" the Bride glanced at the sleeping Witch. " 'I have no soul' – who the hell says that?"

"Her life pretty much went to hell after that boy – Fi whats his face got his blood supply emptied in her apartment. It's natural to be a bit dark after stepping into something like that."

"Fiyero was the name. But she was what, twenty three, twenty four at the time?"

"So it took a few years to start." Ian yawned. The Bride almost cuffed him upside the head again. " Some souls are like that aren't they?"

"But she _knows."_

"Relax, she doesn't know anything." Ian took out the bottle of pills. "Want one?"

"That doesn't solve anything."

"It's not suppose to." he replied jauntily and took three. He sighed contently and leaned back into his seat, eyes closed.

"Ian?" said the Bride, hoping to catch him before he went to sleep.

"Hm?"

"Do you think we should tell her? I mean, maybe not now but eventually?"

"Sure eventually. We're dead and have all the time in the world – we can wait a hundred years if we want. So yeah, _eventually_. Seriously it's not even our problem if you ask me. It'll up to Melena to break the news."

"It'll be just like her to let the whole thing hang for eternity."

_'It'll be just like her to let the whole thing hang for eternity.' _the Bride had said. The Witch could hear it within the depths of her unconscious, where Elphaba was standing over of their cabin, on the metal roof of the train, the wind roaring past her ears, whipping coldly against her face, making it difficult to breathe as air was forced up her nostrils. She was barefoot and wearing a loosely fitted school uniform and a black cloak that threatened to topple her over in the wind.

It was raining hard, big round droplets, smacking into metal, splattering in every direction. But she wasn't afraid of it and wasn't affected for it all went through her, hitting the ground under her feet.

She turned around so she could see inside the window of her cabin; at the Bride and Ian and the Witch, the dim, yellow lighting, the silver, tin table and benches.

'_...let the whole thing hang for eternity.'_

_'All we have is eternity.'_ Elphaba replied. She was eighteen and had just finished her first year at Shiz before heading to the EC to confront the Wizard. This was the end. She became aware of a parcel of luggage which she was carrying under one arm and a bag of food for Glinda in the other, squinting to make out the carriage in the intangible horizon, at the other side of the rain, in a different world.

It was the world she was meant to leave behind.


	11. Chapter 11

"That stuff gave me some crazy dreams." muttered the Witch as they stepped out onto the bustling platform of the Emerald City, squinting against the smoke and dust of the train. She wasn't used to this type of travel anymore, not after years of travelling by broom stick, up alone in the clean, untouched air.

"It tends to do that." replied Ian. "It's like a sleeping pill mixed with acid, I think."

"Then it's a good thing I'm already dead."

It was still cloudy outside, although it had stopped raining. The air was cool and wet, and the sky was white, allowing only a thin film light to come through to colour the City, a dull, cold green. The place looked as worn out as it actually was. But the Witch liked it.

The hailed a cab a few blocks down from the station and took it downtown to the corner of Main street. The Witch recognized the area immediately.

_Fae was crouched in the alley across the compound, waiting for her signal, trying to keep composed. Nerves is what causes most screw ups in this sort of thing. _

_Her colleagues had set up the devices the night before, hidden among the barbed wire. How they managed that, she'll never now since the wall was at least fifteen feet high and guarded. She could hear the start of their morning drill from the other side of the wall, the mechanic, synchronized marching of young Gale Forcers in training, chanting in Gillikin. She steeled herself, feeling the switch in her pocket as if to make sure it was still there, her heart pounding as if to escape it's cavity. _

_The marching stopped._

"_Achtung!" snapped their officer, raising his gun to fire a salute with resounding ''_BANG!'

_That was it!_

_Fae yanked the device out from her pocket and pressed the button, bracing herself._

_The explosion was deafening. The wall was flung into pieces and hurled outward onto the busy street, people and horses, thrown back from the force of the blast as they were struck by debris. Chaos erupted as Resistance members appeared at the windows of the building above her, aiming their rifles towards the stunned troupe of trainee Gale Forcers. Fae stood up shakily, her ears ringing. She could now see into the compound, at frantic boys in green and black uniforms, darting to and fro like frightened mice before dropping to the ground, spurting, red holes in their backs, in their chest, or through the head._

_Their supervising officers were the only ones capable of functioning. They soon gave up on assembling an assault among the boys and went to work amongst themselves, diving for cover before firing back, cheering as a body of the Resistance toppled out from a window, and splattered all over the side walk not six feet from where Fae was standing, wide eyed, mouth hanging open in shock and horror as the agonized sounds of the dying reverberated through her ears..._

It was a garden now.

The concrete walls and barbed wire had been replaced with glass panes, over looking an arrangement of summer tulips, low hanging trees and trimmed, grassy paths.

They went inside the same building across the street and up to the second floor where they entered a cafe. It was one of those rare, hole in the wall places that was able to preserve it's point in time, built upon memories of unfinished brick walls, a real fireplace, polished wooden furniture instead of plastic and oil lit orbs that hung by chains in the ceiling, emitting a dim, yellow light.

They took a table by a window overlooking the garden, where Fiyero once sat, looking down into the ruined compound, at the murder of the Bear Cub it's unfortunate kin.

"Can't we move somewhere away from those portraits?" said the Bride, looking up at the series of of frozen faces staring down at them.

"It's not that bad." replied Ian. "Those are the owner's kids aren't they?"

"They're creepy is what they are – and look at that one! The boy with his grandfather's hair stuck into his scalp."

"We're ghosts. " said the Witch, amused. "I think we can handle creepy."

She sat there, looking out onto the garden, her mind absently drifting to her previous life in the City as an idealistic young girl, playing games of espionage, like a secret agent from childhood. She never admitted it of course. She talked seriously and looked sullen but it was thrilling to sneak and snoop around places, planting _surveillance _devices under desks, in walls, and even in a pair of eyeglasses. She felt like a spy.

But then, right there across the street, came reality, crashing down from a tenth story window, splattering all over her illusion with a gut churning cry. And then went Fiyero...

A couple came towards the table, pulling the Witch from her thoughts.

"Hello Ian, I trust you had a good trip?" said the man, sitting down and motioning the woman to do the same.

"Yeah, it was just swell." he replied, exchanging glances with the Bride.

The man turned to the Witch who stared back at him guardedly. He was an oldish man, younger than her father, perhaps in his late fifties or so. He had a long face with pale skin that seemed to be shrink wrapped onto his skull, with deep set, almost sunken eyes, a long pointy nose and sharp cheek bones. His hair was grey and thinning at the top, complimenting his spindly stature.

"My name is Hank Zhukov." said the man. "And I have to say, it's great to finally meet you, Elphaba Thropp." he extended his hand, his slight smile barely fitting across his thin face.

The Witch was taken aback. "I haven't heard that name in twenty years." she said. "How the hell do you know it?"

"Well what do you think?" piped up the woman with a laugh. "Did you really think I'd keep my mouth shut about you after all this time? Please." She was a young woman, about thirty or so, with sharp, well defined features, red hair down to the shoulders, brown eyes...

"I...I'm sorry." said The Witch. "Have we met before?"

"Oh come on" the woman leaned forward,. "Thirty years isn't _that_ long is it? It's me."

"My memory does not extend as far as thirty years."

"Doesn't it?" the woman smirked. "Even so, who can forget their own mother, Fabala?"


End file.
